Bias in wikipedia

[Michael Ross]

Sites like wikipediareview (as well as Wikipedia talkpages) are full
of detailed criticisms of prominent wikipedians like Slim Virgin and
Jzg. However, wikpedians who edit in less mainstream areas are not as
often criticized. In this draft, some criticism in India-related
articles is detailed. Bias occurs everywhere in wikipedia, but to keep
the draft concise, it is limited to this topic. (If the draft refers
often to the edits of just a few editors, it is not because they are
the most notable or because admins are more important, they are just
*by far* the most "productive" editors on wikipedia.)

BIAS

First it is very obvious that the most active Wikipedians, especially
also admins, are not unbiased editors as you would maybe expect from
an encyclopedia. Here are some examples of bias against Indians:

"Why are you giving so importance to a Third World Contry person like
Talageri? These religious beggers and low class people don't deserve
this much attention." ("User:Truthlover")

"what's happening? Are summer holidays over at American high schools,
and all the ABCD trolls flocking back to give Wikipedia grief? (ABCD
is a slur, ABCD=American Born Confused Desi)" ("User:Dbachmann")

"your physical location is [[American-Born Confused Desi|not so
relevant]]" (but apparently your race is, "Dbachmann", when commenting
on a Hindu editor)

"the only people that care about [ [ Indian mathematics ] ] are
Indians with a collective inferiority complex... Our problem is not
with real kooks so much as with second-generation expatriate youths
who are shedding their testosterone properly intended for tribal
warfare in front of the screen." ("Dbachmann")

"imdiversity.com is at least not a Hindu forum, but it seems still to
be a lobby organization you'd expect to automatically take the side of
an ethnic minority, never mind if their cause makes sense or
not." ("Dbachmann")

"The articles [[Hindu-Arabic numeral system]], [[Arabic numerals]] and
[[Indian numerals]] have been kept separate in order to appease the
angry young Hindu editors." ("Dbachmann")

One administrator ("Dbachmann") was heavily criticized for saying this
on wikipedia:

"These are not simply trolls in the narrow sense, they do not pretend
to be clueless brutes, it is difficult to believe, but I think they
are fully serious. It is pointless to waste time with them, because
even if you get them to listen to sense, there are millions of more
clueless people where they came from, and especially in India, every
sh*thole is getting internet access. I feel for these people, because
they are in an actual ethnic conflict, and must feel actual hate, but
I don't feel responsible for babysitting them, Wikipedia is not for
them."

This is a comparatively mild version of wikipedia bias, but it has
engendered a lot of controversy. The Indians criticized the admin
because he refused to apologize for this comment even after being
critcized heavily for it. The same user was also criticized for
similar remarks and for his tendency to use ethnic, national and
religious attributes of editors when making negative criticisms. As an
example he routinely refers to Hindu editors as Hindutva-trolls, -
zeaolots, -kooks, -meatpuppets, -propagandists, -sockuppets, -sock
army, -crowd and Hindutva editors from hell. (Almost none of the
victims of his name-calling have declared that they are Hindutvadis.)
It would almost seem that he uses the word Hindutva on Hindus as
others would use the word nigger.

Further exemplifying that every Hindu and every aspect of Hinduism
that he disagrees with is "evil Hindutva", this admin even puts Swami
Dayananda in the Hindutva category, who lived long before Sarvakar
(who coined the term Hindutva). The same admin also criticizes the
"Hindutvatis" for their denunciation of [ [ British colonialism ] ],
claiming "Hindutva scohlars seem to delight in, what with denouncing
British colonialists for imperialistic views". He is also an apologist
of British colonoliasm when he writes that India benefited from it
because of the railways which helped in times of famines. (But of
course the railways were built for economical reasons or exploitation,
and many countrys that were not colonized also got railways, including
"third world" country Thailand, and colonized countries are more prone
to famines than non-colonized ones). (Scholars, including Indian
marxist scholars, who disagree with this or similar viewpoints, are
then criticized of being "postmodern" or "postcolonial".)

Of course the fight against "Hindutva" is for many editors just a
fight against Hinduism. Thus one administrator ("Dbachmann") claims
that Dayananda's writings are recognized as having an element of
religious fundamentalism and criticizes Vivekananda for alleged pseudo-
science in an article with the poignant title "Hindutva propaganda"
that was too extreme even for wikipedia standards and got deleted (if
an article created by a long-standing admin can be deleted because of
its bias and against the wishes of the admin, it is probably extreme).

Some of the same admins and editors maybe unsurprisingly also go at
great lengths to equate Hinduism with fascism, racism and "national
mysticism" (and also accuse Hindu editors both of racism and of
playing the race card). The purpose of calling Hinduism "national
mysticism" is of course to paint Hinduism and Hindus as proto-
fascists, thereby smearing the Hindus/Asians/Pagans as evil, and at
the same time making appear the Nazis and other racists as less evil
(since everybody, Jews, Hindus/Pagans, Muslims and Afrocentrists are
also Nazis). There are two explanations for this behaviour.

The first one is that they are fascists who are projecting their own
racism on Hindus. There are of course many fascists who are projecting
their own obvious racism, and that of their party, to Latino, Hindu,
Jewish etc communities. (This does not mean that Hindu, Latino etc
racists do not exist at all.) But there are people who feel they must
protect racism by projecting racism on those protesting racism (e.g.
the BNP in the UK). That's the equivalent of the right wing meme, the
Orwellian "to protest racism is racist."

The second explanation is that they are anti-fascists who believe (or
want to believe) that Hinduism is a fascist and racist cult (this may
be quite common among some Christians for example who are ignorant of
Hinduism but believe that it is "from the devil").

That the latter explanation may be true in many cases is shown by an
admin (Dbachmann) who advances his belief that Hinduism is racist,
e.g. his opinion on the Hinduism article is:

"sadly, this article is very, very, far from being encyclopedic or
even factual. It's a sermon. An eulogy. I made a few edits, but they
do very little. The Vedas don't condone discrimination? Varna has
nothing to do with skin color? I believe that many Hindus believe so
(and this may of course be asserted), but that's just because most
Hindus have never actually read the vedas, or if they have, they
didn't bother to translate. The Rigveda, for example (9.73.5) talks
about the blowing away with supernatural might from earth and from the
heavens the swarthy skin which Indra hates."

And in the Indo-Aryan migration article he writes:
"The tribes hostile to the Indo-Aryans in such warlike encounters are
described as dark-skinned, e.g. RV 9.73.5:
:''O'er Sire and Mother they have roared in unison bright with the
verse of praise, burning up riteless men,''
:''Blowing away with supernatural might from earth and from the
heavens the swarthy skin which Indra hates.''"

That Vedic Hinduism is racist is of course the opinion of nazi
ideologues from Alfred Rosenberg to white-history.com, as also of some
colonial era scholars. But the point is that the admin in these cases
thought that such statements deserve to be in the lead of articles
like Rig-Veda and Indo-Aryans, and this without reference to other
opinions on the subject. In fact he at the same time removed
statements by scholars who think that Hinduism is not racial from
articles, e.g. while claiming that the Rigveda is racist he also
deleted passages that argue otherwise.

While such admins and editors like to routinely refer to Hindus and
Hindu editors as "Hindutva fascists", they have no problem
collaborating with real fascist-minded editors (if they are also anti-
Indian) such as (in the case of admin "Dbachmann") the Islamists
(according to some wikipedia editors, but also quite obvious from
their edits) TerryJ-Ho, Nadirali and Anonymous editor.

One of wikipedia's most blatant examples on an attack on "biography of
a living person" might be admin Dbachmann's attack on Hindu author
Kak. This case also clearly shows the bigotry on wikipedia. Dbachmann
laughs at his poetry, deletes articles on his books, calls him all
kind of names and claims that Kak is taboo and kooky because he is a
physicist writing about Indology. But the same admin promotes the
indological work of astrophysicist Kochar (because of course the
latter happens to be an ally of the like-minded Witzel). So if you
agree with Dbachmann's point of view, then it is okay to be a
physicist and still write on Hinduism. But if you don't agree with
Dbachmann's point of view, then it is kooky and taboo. Dbachmann also
claims (without any credible proof) that the wikipedia article on Kak
and the Amazon reviews on his books were written by Kak himself. But
the fact that anti-Hindus like Steve Farmer are spamming links and
references to their own papers in wikipedia articles is not
criticized. Nor
is it a problem if the like-minded Prof. Witzel is removing criticism
against his political campaigns from the California textbook
controversy article. (Incidentally, according to a wikipedia edit,
Witzel is known to have an email correspondence with administrator
Dbachmann, who also happens to protect the Witzel page on wikipedia
and insert Witzel's point of view (including the fringe ones, like his
Indus-Script-is-not-a-Script-theory) into articles.)

CENSORSHIP

Wikipedia is also a place where inconvenient truths are quickly
removed. If once a serious study on censorship on wikipedia is
undertaken it will almost surely also examine the case of the
committed deletionist Hornplease. While many others are expert in
censoring articles, not many do it with so many words and excuses as
Hornplease. As one wikipedian commented: "What you are infact doing as
visible to me is that you are systematically censoring and removing
mention from wikipedia of atrocities committed against Hindus by
Muslims and providing all bogus reasons for doing so." (Although his
censoring activities are not confined only to Islam-related political
areas).

Another example is the administrator Dbachmann, who when he can not
censor an article (by deleting it, e.g. articles of Hindu authors or
books), will start a defamation campaign. Not only individual authors
(pratically all Hindus or too "pro-Hindu"), but whole book publishing
firms are the victim of such defamations. Thus, an admin ("Dbachmann")
sweepingly claims that the books from a Hindu publishing house ("Voice
of India") are the product of their "criminal energy" (besides of
course also accusing them of publicizing evil propaganda, revisionism
and fringe works). Dbachmann even adds the name of the owner of the
website to the wikipedia article (which of course is not wikipedia
practice, but as so often some admins are more equal than others).
(Also as another of many examples, some members of the Fringe
noticeboard will delete all kind of articles just because they pertain
to their definiton of "fringe" and non-worthy, even if they report
neutraly on a non-mainstream subject, for example articles on non-
mainstream, non-Christian religions. Due to this, that board is pretty
much everything that's wrong about wikipedia, one wikipedian said.
Furthermore, the introduction of the prodding process, where articles
can just be tagged for deletion instead of going through an discussion
process, has facilitated the censorship of the less visited parts of
wikipedia.)

CONCLUSION

There is on wikipedia no shortage of bullies and censorship cops that
will work overtime to manipulate wikipedia. Wikipedia, as has often
been stated, is as a rule unreliable in all areas that are in any
sense political. As the proverb says, "There are lies, damned lies,
statistics, and then there's Wikipedia." In this draft mostly anti-
India bias are detailed. I have limited myself to this topic only to
keep it short, but all politically charged areas in wikipedia suffer
the same problems, especially on non-mainstream subjects. Of course
there are also Indian and Hindu editors with an agenda, but it is easy
to see that they not do have the same influence as their counterpart,
and are quite clearly constantly bullied by the "anti-Hindu" editors.

Wikipedia is clearly unreliable in both theory and practice. The
opportunities for misinformation are too numerous to mention. The
power the higher echelons have for pushing their own agendas, and for
simply behaving like bullies, is enormous. On subjects far removed
from the political, wikipedia can be useful. The problem is that in
anything to do with subjects of great debate and moment, there are
attempts to manipulate. There are those who try, but consistently fail
to present facts without them being twisted or obscured by those who
don't like them. Those wishing to make a beneficial difference are
generally beaten black and blue by the system, and whoever wants to
have a go at them.

I personally believe that history will be more interested in the talk
pages and edit logs than the content itself. What makes Wikipedia
interesting for researchers are not the articles themselves (no
student or scholar would ever rely on or quote from wikipedia), but
the talkpages and the article histories. Wikipedia is not about fact
at all. Its about truth. Its fairly easy to see the truth when you
read between the lines and the diffs. And with a few printscreens, its
easy enough to see the sort of stuff that needs to be ushered out of
view. That's all about truth (and hiding it) as far as I can tell.

If you are into truth, then all that needs to be done is collect a few
diffs. One could say they are only human. Which side of human? You
have to work the truth out for yourself. Most of the time its really
obvious. Wikipedia in my mind (and for my purposes) seems to be just a
method of exposing the truth about power hungry individuals who want
to paint the world in their own particular variety of sh*t. Those who
are good at climbing the ladder, get to drop more influential lumps on
any collection of info that is in the splatter path.

Nearly every article has a band of "campers" hanging around it, who
are much more interested in maintaining their own version of the truth
via the preferential enforcement of technicalities in Wikipedia's
rules, than they are in the truth content of said articles. Wikipedia
was a good idea, but it has been seriously corrupted by people like
these, and the foundation has not done anything to address the
problem. On the contrary, it has, in some cases, supported people who
have worked hard to keep certain articles inaccurate.

Most pages of any significance have a group of people that have
appointed themselves overseers, and resist new additions on general
principle. Often, they have a collective ideology slant and have
chased off everyone who disagrees in any significant way. In this
state, the odd person coming along and trying to modify the article
against the views of the established mass is shouted down, accused of
going against consensus, and chased off.

The issue there in my experience is the same problem we have with US
politics - too many people who care far too much about their own
interpretation of the notability policy are in positions of influence.
It doesn't matter if we're right. What matters to them is we don't
agree with them. So they'll stomp on us and shit on us and delete
entries anyway, out of spite or some twisted logic that what was
originally founded as a public resource is somehow divinely theirs.
The wikipedia editors that push this crap are the internet equivalent
of The Religious Right in american politics, and are about as open to
reason.